In 1918 Konosuke Matsushita set up a company that he called Matsushita. At first he traded from the upstairs rooms of his two storey house where he manufactured electric products. Many years later the products were branded Panasonic.

It wasnt long before Panasonic outgrew the upstairs of his house and it needed to move to a large workshop in 1920 which allowed them to make additional products. Virtually from the beginning Panasonics products were innovative, well designed, high quality and at affordable prices. One of the initial products that Panasonic made was a double adaptor which made it possible to connect two light bulbs into a single socket. The growth of Panasonic continued until 1922 when it was necessary to move to yet a bigger building.

Panasonics success continued in 1923 with another unique product, a bike light that was in the shape of a bullet that had a battery that outlasted comparable products by 10 times their useable time.

This was followed by Panasonics first electric iron which was produced at an affordable price in 1927.

During 1931 Panasonic manufactured an award winning and reliable 3 tube radio known as the R-31. Konosuke even patented his unique design in the product and then made it available to all manufacturers to spur the radio industries growth.

Throughout the 30s and 40s Panasonic continued to innovate and manufacturer quality products. By 1952 they had designed the first monochrome television to have a rectangular picture tube at a price that people could afford. After this innovation all television tubes were rectangular. During the 1950s was investigating methods of recording video signals.

In 1960 Panasonic manufactured their first mass produced colour cathode ray tube television.

Many innovations were produced between 1960 and 1990 and by 1991 Panasonic produced the first optical rewriteable disc recorder for video -this was a precursor to the DVD Recorder. Also during 1991 Panasonic introduced an environmental charter that committed them to help to protect the environment.

Panasonic is now the 5th largest manufacture of electronic products by value in the world with over 600 companies and 306,000 employees. They manufacture over 15,000 products and have over 40,000 patents in Japan and 54,000 patents outside of Japan. In 2007 alone they filed 2100 patents which were the most filed by any company in the world during that year.

To begin with Konosukes Panasonic company and its employees strived to find ways of designing and manufacturing top quality products that provided solutions to everyday problems of the average person. This was done by questioning the standard way of doing things and finding ways of manufacturing products that were better than products that already existed. This philosophy has been applied throughout Panasonic history and today Panasonic still applies these same principals in every product that they manufacture.